China and the World of Business • China Business and the World

There are two basic schools of thought on marketing best practices in China. One school, the Exceptionalists, holds that China is such a unique place that there is little or nothing of value to be learned from overseas experts, academics, or practitioners about the marketing crafts that is applicable here. Only practices that are home-grown and developed with long local experience and a deep understanding of the Chinese culture can ever hope to succeed.

The other school, the Integrationists, holds that China is basically like any other market, just not quite as far along in its development. You may not be able to pull the latest marketing books off of the shelves at Barnes & Noble in New York and apply the recommendations here, but China is pretty much like the U.S. was 10, 20, or 30 years ago. (One member of this school of thought actually said that Chinese advertising agencies bore spooky resemblance to the HBO Miniseries Mad Men.)

I have been to both schools, and I have wound up as what I would call an Experimentalist. I believe that effective marketing in China comes from a combination of global best practices and locally-specific, highly relevant tactics and techniques. Let’s call this the Glocal Mix.

Marketing Mixology

If that seems like a no-brainer, think again. The challenge is that there is no viable formula for how to strike this balance. Not only does the Glocal Mix vary from company to company and sometimes from product to product, but also the given Glocal Mix of a product changes over time as new tools are introduced, old ones lose effectiveness, and the media mix changes.

The most obvious issues with a global approach come in social media. Facebook pages are de riguer for companies around the world, but they don’t work in China for obvious reasons. Simply “localizing” the tactic by taking pages on social media site Renren.com will not garner comparable results, if for no other reason than differences in how people in China use social media, and how much those people have to spend. A year from now, however, this might not be the case.

Engaging bloggers is less effective in China than elsewhere as well, because with a few notable exceptions, blogs play a lesser role in shaping opinions than, say, online forums, QQ, or microblogs. Yet changes in China’s political landscape, and the growing willingness of China’s online “opinion platforms” to actively manage the conversations could well change that. When public discourse is controlled, private platforms get precedence, and it will be the voices who can master tools like WordPress.org who will retain their influence.

The Geek and the Chic

But for those industries where customers around the world share many of the same concerns, lifestyles, and habits (and indeed often directly influence each other), the Glocal Mix tends to be more global. Early adopters of technology and luxury products are prime examples.

Technology early adopters are a part of a global subculture, so much so that buying habits and priorities are often more similar between, say, an early adopter in China and his Korean counterpart than between the Chinese early adopter and his less technically-oriented next-door neighbor. This phenomenon is not restricted to hardware: games tend to make the leap among global early adopters faster than they leak into the general populations of any country.

Luxury early adopters also share a global sub-culture. It would be trite and simplistic to think of this as the global “jet-set,” because the crossover in relationships is limited to the pinnacle consumers in the group, but the similarities in culture are notable: Hong Kong society types may not mix with their counterparts in Paris, Beverly Hills, or the Hamptons, but the toolkits to reach the women waiting for the next LV purse or the men waiting for the next Breitling watch are remarkably similar.

The challenge in selling to the global early adopters is the same for each group: finding the global mix early, and executing simultaneously worldwide.

Once the early adopters are on board, however, companies find that the tactics and approaches need to change in order to reach into the wider market. This is where local focus comes into the mix. Culturally specific, locally-relevant approaches become essential.

Meet the Glocal Team

Operationally, this means that rather than fighting over who owns the campaign design and strategy function among local and global marketing teams, the answer is more nuanced. For those companies, products, and campaigns that depend on an initial bump from early adopters or from markets where there is a high degree of cultural commonality across geographies, global marketing teams create the master plan and strategy, and local teams localize (in coordination with global) and then oversee execution.

For those products or campaigns that seek to leap into wider, even mass markets, the strategy, messages, creative, and execution all need to be developed in market, sharing as much commonality with the global campaign as possible, but not shackled to it. This is the point where considerable autonomy must be granted to local marketing teams.

The challenge for the CMO and his direct reports is to come up with a shared view of the nature of the global market. Is there a global sub-culture that would allow for a more global approach? Or is it necessary to reach a culturally distinct audience in each market, and thus decentralize campaign planning. Regardless of company, this is the essential step, and it can be the most difficult of all.

Being Experimental

Once that agreement is reached, however, focus should be off of massive annual marketing plans and onto highly flexible teams (including agencies) working from clear, measurable, and consistent objectives. Strategies should be in flux as the nature of the market changes and as competitors respond to campaigns.

The idea of committing to yearlong media buys and marketing commitments is passe, especially with both the media landscape and the global economy in a state of flux. Experimentation (in the form of rapid measure-analyze-strategize-execute cycles) takes precedence over research and commitments, and diverse toolkits made up of global and local approaches, tactics, and techniques become more valuable than Big Bang marketing.

This will all be brutally difficult for companies used to more traditional marketing practices. Those who can master it, however, will turn marketing from a cost center into a genuine competitive advantage.